


fathoms below

by dansunedisco



Series: fathoms below 'verse [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Mermaid Clarke Griffin, Mermaids, Sailor Bellamy Blake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 06:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3967444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/pseuds/dansunedisco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There’s seaweed in her hair, and tiny shells across her collarbone, and right below her bellybutton a pattern of fish scales starts and doesn’t stop until the tip of fins where her feet should be.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Bellamy is a sailor. Clarke is the mermaid who saves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fathoms below

The mast cracks in half and topples over with a deafening boom. It tips the ship impossibly against the churning sea, and all Bellamy can do is brace himself as a thundering wave crashes down around him. 

He’s swept off his feet and tossed onto the deck, and he watches a dozen unlucky souls get swept away when the bow dips forward a moment later. The sky is dark and stormy above, crackling with lightning, relentless and angry and fierce. 

 _Octavia_ , he thinks, and _Mom_ and _please_ but there’s not much to pray for out here but to die quickly, and he can’t ask for that. 

He grabs onto the rope tied fast around his middle and holds and holds.

 

-

 

He wakes on his back in the sand with the tide lapping up around his feet and a gentle hand on his cheek.

There’s a girl kneeling by his side. Her hair is a blonde halo in the soft sunshine of the morning, her face almost beautiful enough to believe he died if not for the aching pain in his bones.

She must have been walking the beach, her village just over the bluff.

He groans, and she huffs a laugh. 

He falls into a coughing fit when he tries to speak, wanting to ask where he is and how he survived, if there were any others, and perhaps her name. And it’s there that he realizes the girl maybe isn’t a village girl after all.

There’s seaweed in her hair, and tiny shells across her collarbone, and right below her bellybutton a pattern of fish scales starts and doesn’t stop until the tip of fins where her feet should be. He reaches out to touch the shimmering blue before he can stop himself, and jerks back at the slippery-wet feel, glances up to see that her eyes have bled to black. His heart stutters in his chest.

 _Mermaid,_ he thinks. Every sailor has heard of mermaids, but— “You saved me,” he rasps, tales of men being dragged to the bottomless depths below whirling at the forefront of his mind. And then, he remembers; slipping into the cold, unforgiving waters; a strong arm around his middle taking him to the surface when his strength gave out. It was her.

 

-

 

She saves him. 

She’s not supposed to, but she does anyway.

Wells, who keeps close to her side always and keeps her secrets better than his own, looks at her with worried eyes as she hauls the human onto a piece of wreckage.

“Clarke,” he says. “What are you doing?” 

She doesn’t know. Interacting with humans is forbidden, and saving the life of one who was surely meant to die is unforgivable—even for crowned princesses.

The water is choppy still, white foam churning with the swells, and she contemplates about letting the human (a boy; no, a _man_ ) slip back into the waves to meet his fate. No one would know, and Wells would never tell, but the man groans and his eyes flutter open to meet hers for a brief moment, and suddenly she feels sick at her thoughts. 

He’s beautiful, but fragile—tender bones and skin that are no match for the harsh brine of her lands, lungs that don’t work under water, useless appendages that can barely keep them afloat. He doesn’t belong.

“I’m taking him to shore,” she says firmly. They aren’t far. 

She swims and swims, careful to keep the man afloat, intending to bring him to the cape where all the ships go. There’s a secluded beach she can leave him, and a town a little beyond that.

It’s morning by the time she arrives. She’s tired, but triumphant, and drags his pliant body easily up the sandy shores. And she means to slip back into the water as soon as she does this, but—she’s curious. She’s always been too curious (if you let her mother tell the story), and it’s this burning curiosity that keeps her on the beach, makes her card her fingers through the human’s hair, touch his face and count the strange but handsome dots along the bridge of his nose. 

He comes to suddenly—or, at least, it feels that way to Clarke—and she freezes in place while he squints up at her. 

Then, he groans, and wheezes, and starts coughing like he has a lungful of water. It would be comical, almost, if Clarke didn’t realize how absolutely foolish she’s being.

He reaches out and touches her hip, fingers soft against her scales, and his gaze flicks back up to meet hers, confused and alarmed.

“You saved me,” he says, and Clarke’s stomach warms at the sound of his voice. 

The warmth in her stomach quickly turns to stone, and Clarke shoves herself back into the ocean. The human tries to follow, but he’s weak, struggling to push up onto knees, and she hangs in the shallows for but a second before turning tail for deeper, more familiar depths. 

Wells meets her where the beach drops off into a rocky precipice, looking more apprehensive than she’s ever seen him before, but he doesn’t say a word. They swim together towards home, and part ways in the grotto, a heavy and burdened silence between them. 

Her mother asks her where she’s been all night, but her father is quick to come to her defense (as he always is).

“Harmless research, I’m sure,” he says. “Right, Clarke?” 

She can barely look him in the eye when she answers in the affirmative. A faint chill that has nothing to do with the cold current breezes across her skin as she thinks about what she’s done, and she sends a silent prayer along to the fathoms below that she hasn’t made the worst mistake of her life.

Later that night, she dreams of the human; the way his skin felt against hers, his dark hair curling against his forehead, and, when she wakes, she imagines what it would be like to talk to him, to know his name and for him to know hers, fear of punishment dulled under the pretense that it’s all hypothetical. 

But it’s easy for curiosity to burn its brightest in the sleepy, harmless mornings, and Clarke thinks of how easy it would be to go back to the beach, just for a glimpse. It’s a slippery slope is what it is, and the next morning, she doesn’t even pretend to be going anywhere else but towards the secluded beach of yesterday. She leaves a note to appease her mother, and makes a round at the kelp forest for an alibi before taking the westerly current to her destination.

The swim is easier without something, or someone, to tow, and she slowly rises to the surface just as the sun peeks its head over the horizon. And, while she wasn’t expecting the human to be waiting on the rocks for her, there’s still a fizzle of a letdown in her stomach when she sees that the beach is just as empty as it would be on any other day.

She swims towards the beach half-heartedly—she’s already there, after all—and then realizes that something is scribed into the sand further up from the tide. She swishes her tail to propel herself faster, a strange bubble of anticipation crawling up her spine.

 _Bellamy,_ it reads, in thick, unmistakable lines made of sticks and whitewashed driftwood.

She laughs, bubbles displacing the water around her mouth.

It takes hardly any effort to trace _Clarke_ right back.

 

-

 

 _Mermaids_ , he thinks. It’s a one-word mantra that he’s been repeating for the better part of the day, and, while he _knows_ what he saw, it still doesn’t feel at all real.

In fact, the past day feels like a dream—or a nightmare. His ship was lost, the crew along with her, and the tiny seaside village beyond the bluffs doesn’t have the means to return him anywhere close to home. But they’re friendly, and sympathetic to his plight, and the innkeeper, Miller, offered to put him up room and board for a little work on the piers.

Still, their sympathy doesn’t do much to solve any of his problems, and maybe it’s a defense mechanism to keep him from falling into absolute, utter despair, but his thoughts constantly loop back to the girl (creature; _mermaid_ ) who saved his life.

He almost divulged the secret of his survival when he stumbled into town the day before, still delirious and dehydrated, and he’s glad he had enough faculties about him not to. While he’s sure most would’ve taken his story as a sailor coming to terms with survivor’s guilt, he’s sure he would’ve also been pegged as… _troubled_.

Maybe he is, he thinks. After all, he left his name in the sand as a belated thank you to a being that, for all intents and purposes, is supposed to be nothing but a fantasy. 

He doesn’t know what possesses him to go back to the beach when his work is done, but he does. And, to his surprise, he doesn’t just come upon the washed-up remains of his ill-advised beach art, but to a reply.

 _Clarke_ is scooped out in the wet sand, and he stumbles out into the water up to his ankles like he might catch a glimpse of the mermaid— _Clarke—_ if he just moves fast enough. He thinks he sees a shine of blue flit out in the distance, but when nothing else transpires, convinces himself it was just a trick of the light. Still, there’s no denying the name in the sand below his.

He careful dismantles the driftwood, and sits on the rocky outcrop and watches the rising tide lap away the mermaid’s name.

 

-

 

It’s like that for a week. Bellamy recovers his strength at night, works at the piers next to the innkeeper’s son through the day, and visits the quiet beach when his job is done. The mermaid is never there when he arrives, but there’s always a sign of her presence—another word in the sand, a piece of ribbon, sea glass and random baubles that don’t mean anything to him. 

In a way, she’s his only friend. Sure, he’s made easy acquaintances with the younger Miller, and the jokers Monty and Jasper, but none of them truly understand what it’s like to plunge into cold waters with a certainty that it’s your last. It’s this strange kinship that keeps him coming back, and feeds his desire to talk to her.

Today, he’s here to tell her he’s leaving in a fortnight’s time. He needs to go home. The trek is a long one (months, if all goes well), one he would rather not undertake by foot, but he knows word of the Arcadia’s demise will reach back to his sister sooner rather than later. She doesn’t deserve that news, not if he can help it.

He’s crafting a message when he hears an odd splash nearby, and he nearly trips over the driftwood in his haste to turn around. He knows it could be anything, but this time, he’s sure it’s _her._

She’s just as beautiful as he remembers, watching him with icy blue eyes just off the shore. The stories he’s heard so often, of vengeful mermaids dragging hapless men into the deep, leap forefront into his mind.

He walks to the outcrop he’s made his usual perch, and she swims forward when he sits down.

 

-

 

A week passes, and every day he and the mermaid meet. He learns to pronounce her name, and quickly learns that she’s stubborn, too, and curious, and thirsty for knowledge of the human world. Every day, she poses him with a new question, and refuses to answer his until he’s satisfactorily answered hers. She has a mother, and a father, and a best friend—her life under the sea doesn’t seem entirely unlike his or anyone else’s, and it’s almost too easy to grow fond of their conversations. 

Every morning he wakes, looking forward to spending the evening with her, and by the time he realizes this, it’s almost time for him to leave.

“Bellamy,” she says, chin on her crossed forearms. “What are you thinking about?”

“Home,” he replies, because it’s a lot easier to admit that he’s thinking of that than her, always her, these days.

 

-

 

They’ve been sitting in silence for the better part of an hour, the sun hovering over the horizon. It’s another sunset to mark the evenings he’s spent by the mermaid’s side, and another reminder that he’s actually become rather reluctant to leave it.

“Stop moving,” she says suddenly, peeking up at him from her piece of parchment paper to frown. 

She divulged early on that she enjoys drawing, but tonight is the first time she’s wanted to draw _him_. “Can’t you do it from memory?” he teases. He’s seen her jot down an incredibly life-like sketch of a dolphin just the day before in barely any time at all.

She pauses and looks up at him thoughtfully. Then, “Not unless you want to look stranger than usual.”

He laughs, but leaves her to her work.

He’s been sitting for what feels like hours now, and it’s cold out. He can see a storm front rolling in, dark, menacing clouds in the distance at odds with the orange-red hue of the sun.

He should head back to the inn. The hike to the village isn’t long from here, but the last thing he needs is to get caught in the rain when he only has a spare of Miller’s clothes to call his own. Still, he can’t seem to get his legs working, or to bid Clarke goodnight. In two days time, he’ll leave this little seaside town and never see her again. The thought of it squeezes his heart in a way that screams trouble, but he shrugs the niggling worry away before it fully forms.

The extra time between them is almost worth it when the sky cracks above them and the rain thunders down around his shoulders, Clarke laughing at the stunned expression on his face.

“It’s not that bad,” she exclaims, and then proceeds to splash her fin to wet him even further. 

He shivers at the feel of water sluicing down his neck, and grumbles back, “Says the one submerged in cold waters on a constant basis.”

Her smile widens a fraction, and she swims alongside as he carefully maneuvers his way from the rocks. “The way humans—“

But the rest of her sentence is drowned out by a rushing roar, and he turns, just in time to see a large wave crest over the outcrop. It catches all of him, and he falls backwards, butt-first, into the sand.

For a second, the seawater taste in his mouth drags him back to the beginning; another second ticks by, and Clarke is suddenly at his side. She swipes his hair back and the touch inexplicably calms him.

“Thanks for the warning, princess.” 

“Are you okay?” she asks, blowing past his sarcasm with a worried pinch to her brow. “I keep forgetting how terrible your ballast is.“

“Balance,” he corrects, rubbing a hand over his sternum to calm his hammering heart. “And you can’t blame terrible balance on me when I’m overcome by a giant wave.”

“I’ll give you a pass. This time.”

And maybe it’s the worry on her face, or the rain, but something pulls at his heartstrings; makes it easy to reach out and run his thumb along her cheekbone and hold her gaze like she’s the only star in the night’s sky. _Two days left_ , he thinks, and then thinks of carrying regret the rest of his life if he doesn’t at least go for it.

“Bellamy,” she breathes, and reaches up to circle her fingers around his wrist. 

“Is this--?”

She nods, and turns her cheek against his palm. She’s still warm to the touch, despite the frigid rain, and he meets her halfway when she presses up to touch her lips to his.

She tastes like salt and sunshine, like wind and lightning and freedom. Like everything he’s ever wanted, and everything he can never have. He winds his fingers through her hair despite his heart telling him to let go, and kisses her until he’s numb from the cold.


End file.
